


Red

by shimere277



Category: Drake's Venture (1980)
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-19
Updated: 2010-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 19:06:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shimere277/pseuds/shimere277
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternate universe where Drake did not execute Doughty at San Julian, but abandoned him in Patagonia.  Doughty is taken in by the Spanish, and years later, Drake must face him after the defeat of the Armada.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blakefancier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blakefancier/gifts).



“This obsession of yours,” said the Queen, “becomes tiresome, my Dragon.  Is’t not enough that we have achieved such a great victory, enough that the enemy flies before us and England takes her seat among the great naval powers of the world?”

“You know as well as I, majesty, that the debt is a personal one.”

“A failing on your part.  An old weakness.  Let it go, Admiral.”

“As I did at San Julian?  And if Thomas Doughtie were a danger to us in the wilds of Patagonia, where he was a stranger to all in manner and tongue and knew not the land or its peoples, then how much more so a danger in Ireland amongst his kinfolk?”

“His kinfolk.”  She stroked her fan.  “You seem quite certain of that.”

“Doughtie’s father was no gentleman, but bought his arms with prosperity.  And when we were in Antrim with Essex, Doughtie’s manner seemed more than passing sympathetic to the rabble at times.  Think you, Your Highness, that it is by coincidence these Spanish stragglers with Captain Doughtie were taken in by the wildmen of the O’Doherty clan?”

“I think ‘tis no coincidence, Drake, that the _San Juan de Portugual_ held off thy ship _Revenge_ when they met in the channel.  Another moment of weakness?”

Drake did not answer.

“Or am I to take it that Captain Doughtie is now the superior mariner?”  the Queen snapped her fan shut impatiently.  “Go home, Drake.  Your wife awaits you.  And England’s hero needs an heir – which you shall not get on a treacherous half-blood gentleman.”

 

 

Anyone who believed that Drake would obey his good Queen’s order did not know Drake.

Nevertheless, her implications did not fail to trouble him.  He knew that Doughtie was a traitor, a danger to England and all that Drake held sacred.  At the time, he had not wanted to believe that Doughtie’s attempted mutiny on the circumnavigation was a result of anything more sinister than the gentleman’s wounded pride – but for him to have been picked up so quickly when Drake abandoned him in Patagonia?  Drake remembered the rumors that he had so long ignored: the Doughties were Catholics, recusants, had roots in Ireland.  How could he help but believe now that Doughtie had been in Spanish employ all the while?

Why did the bastard have to come with the armada?  To taunt Drake?

Yes, Drake had let him go a second time.  He did not want Doughtie dead – at least, not yet.  Not until he knew the truth.  Not until he knew if Doughtie had lied to him from the very beginning.  If he came to believe that – then Doughtie would die, and at Drake’s own hand.

 

 

Drake’s men had a wise respect for the wild terrain of the Irish coastline.  Drake’s own trepidations were more concerned with the wild interior landscape of Irish politics.  One could never quite be sure which clans were loyal to England, which ones pretending to be loyal, which ones rebellious but looking to sell themselves to the highest bidder, or which ones savage to the core.  Compounding the problem was all of the inter-clan rivalry – it had happened more than once for an ally to turn upon learning that the English had enlisted the allegiance of an ancestral rival.

To their credit, most of the Irish repelled the Spanish invasion fleet as the storms battered it up along the coast.  Perhaps it was because the Irish feared the Spanish more than the English.  Irish Catholicism was not quite the same thing as Spanish papism.  Drake suspected the Irish had no love for the Inquisition.

The O’Doherty clan was something else.  Drake had learned the ancient name - O'Dochartaigh – literally meant obstructive.  They had ancient roots, descended from Irish kings, and they bowed to nobody.  If Doughtie was with them, they had probably taken him to the family castle in Buncrana.  From a distance, it seemed little more than an organized heap of stones.  Drake couldn’t imagine Doughtie, with his fine tastes and manners bred by his life in the courts of England and Spain, living in this throwback to the Medieval era.  Which meant, in Drake’s estimation, as soon as possible Doughtie intended to escape back to Spain.

He might have done so already.  There was no time to lose.  Drake could not have afforded to linger longer in hopes of persuading his Queen.  This mission would only take a few short weeks, and then he would be back in London, in the ivory and ice-cold arms of his well-bred wife.

Drake’s troops marched into town and appropriated the local inn.  They had a right to – they were English soldiers.  Then he watched and he waited.  One of two things would happen – a representative of Sir John – nee Shane - Mor O’Doherty would come to negotiate, or they would attempt to smuggle Doughtie out in the middle of the night.

 

 

That night, Drake had a dream of Antrim.  He fell asleep in a warm bed and seemed to wake on a chill, damp bed of grass in the country.  It was the scent of it, the smell that had been in his nostrils all day, the smell of the Irish hillsides.  Thomas was there – of course – by his side.  How vividly he could feel it, that web of tension and intimacy between them.  How close and yet how deep the gulf between mariner and gentleman, how impossible to navigate the shoals of what would have been easy at sea.  Here, there were no words for a man to say that he loved another man.  How many times would he say to Doughtie, “Thou hast my love,” and have it mean his most sincere and manly affection?

It wasn’t that at all.  It was the thing he was supposed to feel for his wife – salty Mary, his first wife  – who, unlike genteel Elizabeth, his second, possessed his most sincere and manly affection.

Thomas’ eyes were like the night skies, promising everything, the infinite, but placing it all too far out of reach.  Had he ever returned Drake’s love?  Was he too caught in the web of social entanglements that made it impossible for them to be together?  Or did he encourage Drake’s unrequited affections in order to better ensnare him in the betrayal to follow?

But the dream Doughtie shook his head.  “I could not take your hands,” he said.  Drake looked at him quizzically, then followed Doughtie’s eyes.  Drake’s hands were covered with rich, red blood.

He awoke in his warm bed, covered in cold sweat.

 

 

The next morning, Drake was surprised by a timid knock on his door.  The soldier reported that O’Doherty had sent his representative to speak with Drake: one Captain Thomas Doughtie, gentleman, formerly of the Inner Temple.

Drake sent away the man and composed himself.  Doughtie’s gesture was foolish beyond all measure.  He would have no hope of escape now.  Unless escape were not the point?

A few minutes later, the soldier returned with Doughtie.  Drake dismissed the soldier and forced his breathing to be even, his posture firm.  Doughtie looked tired, worn with hardship, but the years had treated him well.  He still possessed that proud beauty which had captivated Drake so long ago.

“As ever, you prove beyond mine understanding,” said Drake.

“You came for me, Francis,” Doughtie replied, “and not for those poor soldiers at the keep who would be massacred if taken into less friendly territory.”

“You have sympathy then, for these Spanish dogs?  They are more to you than allies of necessity?”

“I have sympathy for poor soldiers who do naught but the bidding of Pope and King, and would fain be at home with their wives and children.”

Drake turned away from him.  “A soldier cannot afford such sentimentality.”

“If so, how much less can he afford love?”

Drake wheeled back on him.  Their eyes locked together for one anguished moment.  “What could you know of love, you who did betray him who loved you best of all men?”

“And what could you know of love, who did stand by to watch the murder of hundreds of women and children on Rathlin Island?”

“Rathlin?”  Drake hadn’t thought of that godforsaken place in years.  It was incomprehensible to him.

“Aye, Francis.  In that hour were my sympathies forever set against England.  And in this hour we see hapless sailors hunted down and slaughtered by panicked Irish peasants at the behest of the very people who slaughtered them so readily in years past.  Oh, I am sick of the world.  Would that you had laid me to my rest at St. Julian’s Bay.”

“A performance worthy of the best players at court,” snapped Drake.  “I believe not for a moment that you would so easily throw away your life.”

“How easy for you to say, good admiral.  You have been granted a life of wealth and honor.  For my part, life has been bitter and loveless.  For whatever sacrifices I have made, I left the world no better for it.  I might just as well have joined you in plunder.”  Doughtie crossed the room, unfastening his doublet.  He draped it carefully over a chair.  “Then again, perhaps you are right.  Perhaps having bought the lives of the Spanish soldiers with one distraction, I seek to buy my own life with another.”  He sat upon the enormous bed.  “With that which you have so desired for these many years.”

The entire world turned to molten fire, but Drake did not move, save that he tightened his fists.

Doughtie slowly unlaced his shirt and removed it.  He lay across the bed, leaning on one elbow.  “Or perhaps I seek what I have desired these many years, once before my death.”

Drake felt the dragon in him stir, uncoiling itself in his loins; the fire was in his heart, his lungs, he was breathing it now.  But he shook his head.  He had come here to find out if Doughtie had once loved him, not to be enmeshed in their current desires.  “I trust you not, Thomas Doughtie.”

Doughtie smiled most inappropriately for a man bargaining for his life.  “Tie me, then,” he said, sitting up and extending his arms before him.

It was too much; Doughtie knew him too well.  Drake might desire Doughtie’s love with all his heart, but his loins wanted power, wanted control, and the dragon always won out in the end.  There was rope to hand – did a mariner not always have rope?  It was not long before Doughtie’s hands were bound behind his back, his breeches gone, and he was stooped bending over the bed.

It was harder to find something that would make the way pleasant for them.  Drake settled on a pot of unguent – his fancy for perfumes was well-known.  He slicked it on his hands and opened Doughtie with two fingers.  The gentleman hissed with pleasure.  Drake could see that he was fully erect.  So it was not a question of whether his desire was a lie anymore.

Another question replaced it.  How many men had had him before Drake?

Rage and passion, Drake’s entire world was red.  He did not go easily on the gentleman, fucking him hard, digging his fingers into the gentleman’s flesh enough to leave bruises.  Doughtie seemed to thrive under the rough treatment.  Perhaps this was Drake’s mistake.  Perhaps he should have brought him back to England, a captive, subjecting him every night to naval discipline.  Perhaps that night in the Irish countryside, he should not have hesitated out of love and fear, but taken that which was his by right.

Doughtie was wild, burying his moans and cries into the sheets so that the entire inn was not wakened by his passions.  Drake wrapped Doughtie’s cock in his strong fist, forcing him to climax.  He needed the gentleman’s body to know its master, its source of satisfaction.  Then, with a few quick thrusts, Drake completed his pleasure.  Too little, too quick for all those years of unrequited desire.  Drake wanted more.

But more was impossible.  Doughtie dropped to the floor, kneeling.  His hair, still thick and dark, was dripping with sweat, his lips swollen, his eyes still promising the remote bounty of the night.  Drake had to act: kill him or let him go.  There was no other alternative.  If he brought Doughtie back to England, the gentleman would face a traitor’s trial – he would surely be tortured to extract a confession, then he would be drawn and quartered.  No, Drake would not see that beautiful body destroyed.

“I could have remained safe in Madrid,” said Doughtie.  “Instead I came with the armada, knowing that I would meet you.  I needed to finish it.”  He smiled again.  “But it will never be finished, good admiral.”

There was one other thing Drake demanded of him.  He grasped Doughtie’s silken beard, pulled him into a rough kiss.  Ah well, the Queen had never wanted Drake to bring back Doughtie anyway.  “You will find a way,” he said, “and you will come to me.”

Doughtie nodded.  “As always.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
